Tributes to t\^e ^\emoTyof- 



^«SW^ 




CIass___Lji_iL 
Book. 



^Ky^^JPT 




TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF 
HON. JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY, 



EcprintelJ from tl)e ProccelJinfffli of ti)e iflaseacijuscttg pigtortcal ^o(ietj). 



•' rf/Wf 



TRIBUTES 



TO THE MEMORY OF 



HON. JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY. 



At a stated meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
on the 8th of September, 1870, after the transaction of the 
formal business, the President, the Hon. Egbert C. Winthrop, 
spoke as follows : — 

It is with no little personal sorrow that I announce the 
death of my cherished friend, the Honorable John Pendleton 
Kennedy, who was elected a Corresponding Member of this 
Society in 1858. I am sure the Society will indulge me, 
this morning, in dwelling at some length on the character 
and career of one, who had far higher claims than any friend- 
ship or affection of mine could give him to the regard and 
respect of his contemporaries. 

Mr. Kennedy was born on the 25th of October, 1795, in the 
city of Baltimore ; where his father, of Irish origin, who died 
early, was then a prosperous merchant. His mother, who 
lived to see her son — and he was her eldest — at the height 
of his reputation as an author and statesman, was a daughter 
of Philip Pendleton, of Berkeley County, Virginia, of a family 
distinguished by the virtues and accomplishments of more 
than one of its members. Graduated at Baltimore College 
in 1812, he soon selected the law as his profession. But our 
war with England was just then at its commencement ; and 

1 



his pursuits were interrupted by the excitements of the period, 
and by the perils to wliich liis native city was peculiarly 
exposed. With his friend, the late Mr. George Peabody, he 
volunteered and served as a private at the battles of Bladens- 
burg and North Point ; and with him, not many years ago, 
received from the United States the bounty land awarded to 
that service. 

Admitted to the Baltimore Bar in 1816, he practised with 
success for several years, at a period when that Bar was 
adorned by such men as William Pinckney and William Wirt 
and the late Chief-Justice Taney ; with more than one of 
whom he was sometimes associated as junior counsel in 
important causes, and with all of whom he was on terms 
of personal friendship. His taste for literary life, however, 
soon came in conflict with that for legal studies ; and as early 
as 1818 he had become joint editor, with his accomplished 
friend, the late Peter Hoffman Cruse, of a little fortnightly 
serial, in prose and verse, under the title of " The Red 
Book." This little work was continued for two or three 
years, and its contents subsequently collected into two 
volumes. 

And now the attractions of political service and public 
employment threatened to draw him away both from litera- 
ture and from law. He was induced to take an active part 
in the Presidential campaign of 1820 ; and in the same year 
was elected a member of the House of Delegates of Maryland. 
In that body he rendered conspicuous service for several 
years ; a part of the time as Speaker, and always as an 
intelligent and earnest advocate of measures for improving 
the financial condition and restoring the credit of tlie State. 

In 1823, he accepted an appointment from President Mon- 
roe, as Secretary of our Legation to Chili ; and I have 
heard him describe most humorously his first interview with 
the late John Quincy Adams, — then Secretary of State, of 
whom in later years he enjoyed the intimate acquaintance 



and friendship, — when he called on Mr. Adams at the State 
Department for his instructions, preparatory to embarking 
for his post. " Instructions ! " said Mr. Adams. " The only 
instructions I have to give you at present are these ; " and 
reaching up, with the aid of a chair, to a high shelf, or pigeon- 
hole, in his bookcase, he handed him a carefully prepared 
description and drawing of the uniform which our Legations 
abroad were then required to wear, — not yet discarded as 
inconsistent with Republican principles, — and told him to 
provide himself accordingly. Mr. Kennedy's youthful aspira- 
tions for diplomacy were not stimulated, or altogether satisfied, 
by this view of what was expected of him ; and, before it was 
too late, he obtained leave to resign the appointment. 

His interest in public affairs, however, continued unabated ; 
and, in the intervals of professional labor, he prepared and pub- 
lished a number of political essays, which attracted a wide and 
marked attention. Having warmly espoused the views of Henry 
Clay (of whom not long afterwards he became one of the most 
trusted and valued friends) on the subject of American Industry, 
he wrote and printed, in 1830, an elaborate and masterly reply 
to Mr. Cambreleng's memorable Report on Commerce and 
Navigation, which had a general circulation throughout the 
country ; and in the following year he rendered eminent 
service, by tongue and pen, at a National Convention of the 
friends of Manufacturing Industry, held in the City of New 
York. 

But it soon appeared that his more purely literary labors 
had by no means been abandoned or suspended, and that he 
was destined to make no common mark — for that period, 
certainly — in a line of literature in which our own hon- 
ored Founder, Dr. Jeremy Belknap, had led the way in 
1792, by his American tale, " The Foresters ; " and in which 
Charles Brockden Brown and Washington Irving and James 
Fenimore Cooper had since been so conspicuous. 

In 1832, Mr. Kennedy published his first novel, under the 



4* 

name of " Swallow Barn, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion ; " 
a work which produced a decided impression, and which 
received high commendations from the pen of Edward 
Everett, in the " North American Review," the only vehicle 
at that time of well-considered literary criticism in our part of 
the country. Its sketches of Virginia life and manners, includ- 
ing a very notable chapter on Slavery, entitled " The Quarter," 
furnish the best picture we have even now of that section of the 
Union at the period to which they relate, and possess not a 
little of historical interest and permanent value. This, too, 
may be said, even more emphatically, of his second novel, 
" Horse-Shoe Robinson, a Tale of the Tory Ascendency," 
published in 1835 ; of which the scene was laid in the Caro- 
linas, during our Revolutionary struggle, and of which the 
hero was drawn from the life, — the incidents of his remark- 
able career having been derived from his own lips by Mr. 
Kennedy himself, while he was residing at the South for the 
benefit of his health, in 1819. 

A third novel, " Rob of the Bowl ; a Legend of St. Inigoes," 
in which there is much historical matter connected with the 
religious commotions in Maryland, in the time of the seconcj 
Lord Baltimore, was published by him in 1838 ; and in 1840 
he produced, in a fourth volume, under the title of " The 
Annals of Quodlibet," a humorous and satirical account of 
the Presidential campaign in which he was at that moment a 
prominent actor, with an almost dramatic presentment, under 
fictitious names, of scenes which had actually occurred within 
the range of his own observation and experience. 

Mr. Kennedy had now, however, become a member of Con- 
gress, having been chosen as one of the Representatives of 
tlie Baltimore District in 1838, and having been re-elected in 
1841 and 1843. His services at Washington were of the 
highest value and importance ; and particularly those which he 
rendered as Chairman of the Committee on Commerce in the 
Twenty-seventh Congress. Having been associated with him 



as his second on that Committee, as well as in the intimacies 
of a common table and of apartments under a common roof, 
I can bear personal testimony to the diligence and ability 
which he brought to the public business. His Reports on 
subjects connected with our Commercial System, and par- 
ticularly on our proposed Reciprocity Treaties, were elaborate 
and exhaustive ; and his speeches were forcible and eloquent. 
I cannot forget that we were together, too, on that Committee, 
when, not without hesitation and distrust, the first appro- 
priation was reported to enable Mr. Morse to try the 
experiment, between Washington and Baltimore, of that 
Magnetic Telegraph, which now covers our continent, and 
encircles the earth. Though the Report was written and pre- 
sented by another hand, it owed much of its success, both in 
Committee and in the House, to the earnest support of Mr. 
Kennedy, 

In 1844, he published a very striking little volume, called 
" A Defence of the Whigs," which became almost a hand-book 
of politicians, and which contains an admirable vindication of 
the party with which he was always connected as long as it 
existed. But that party had but a precarious and fitful suprem- 
acy in Baltimore ; and at the next election, in 1845, he failed 
of a majority, and was never again returned to Congress. 
The following year, however, found him again in the Chair 
of the House of Delegates at Annapolis, having been elected 
once more to the Legislature of Maryland, after an interval of 
five and twenty years, with a view to an important juncture 
in the affairs of his native State. 

This service rendered, Mr. Kennedy once more quietly 
resumed his literary labors ; and, as the result of them, pub- 
lished, in 1849, an excellent biography, in two octavo volumes, 
of the eminent lawyer and statesman, William Wirt, — one of 
the purest and best of the public men of his day, upon 
whom Mr. Kennedy had delivered a Eulogy, immediately after 
his death, in 1834. This work — in which the author sedu- 

1* 



6* 

lously avoided all personal display, and allowed Mr. Wirt to 
exhibit himself to the best advantage in his own brilliant 
public addresses and lively familiar correspondence — was 
recognized everywhere as a valuable contribution to American 
Biography, and to the history of the times ; and no better 
book of its kind could have been placed in the hands of the 
young men of the United States, to whom it was dedicated. 

Meantime and previously, Mr. Kennedy had delivered not 
a few occasional Discourses, mostly of an historical character : 
one, in 1835, before the American Institute of New York ; 
another, in the same year, before the Faculty of Arts and 
Sciences of the University of Maryland, in which he had been 
appointed Professor of History, and of which he was the 
Provost for many years before his death ; and a third, in 
1845, before the Maryland Historical Society, of which he was 
Vice-President, on the Life and Character of George Calvert, 
the first Lord Baltimore, which involved him in a sharp con- 
troversy with several of the Roman Catholics of Maryland, 
to whom he made an elaborate rejoinder, exhibiting great 
ability and research. His Address, too, before the Maryland 
Institute, in 1851, published with engraved illustrations of the 
old town of Baltimore, as it was just a hundred years before, 
was replete with valuable local descriptions and details. 

In 1852, on the resignation of Governor Graham of North 
Carolina, who had been appointed Secretary of the Navy by 
President Fillmore, on his succession to the Presidency after 
the lamented death of General Taylor, Mr. Kennedy was 
called to preside over the Navy Department of the United 
States ; and continued a member of the Cabinet, of which his 
friends Mr. Webster and Mr. Everett were successively the 
ciiiefs, until the change of Administration, in March, 1853. 
This was the period of some of our most interesting Naval 
Scientific Expeditions : that of Commodore Perry to Japan ; 
and that of Dr. Kane to the Arctic Ocean, in search of Sir John 
Franklin, for which Mr. Kennedy prepared the instructions, 



and gave to it the most effective encouragement. His name 
was accordingly given by Dr. Kane to one of the channels 
which he discovered, and was inscribed on his map of the 
Arctic Regions. 

The visit of Mr. George Peabody to his native land in 1856, 
and his noble endowment of the Peabody Institute in Bal- 
timore, where, as a young banker, he had for some years 
resided, afforded Mr. Kennedy a new subject of interest, and 
opened to him a new field of useful labor. He was at once 
selected by Mr. Peabody, as the Chairman of the Board of 
Trustees for his great gift to the Baltimore Institute ; and I 
have the best authority for knowing how earnestly he entered 
upon and pursued the work of organization committed to him, 
and how highly and gratefully his services were appreciated 
by Mr. Peabody to the last. 

The darkest days of our country were now rapidly aj^proach- 
ing. Mi\ Kennedy was never, I believe, an owner of slaves, 
nor ever a supporter or apologist for slavery. But, on the 
other hand, he had never co-operated or sympathized with 
the extreme Abolitionists of the North, and had always united 
in measures for securing to his own, and the other Southern 
States, the rights in regard to this institution which were 
expressed or implied in the Constitution of the United States, 
as he understood its provisions. No northern man, however, 
could have been more averse than he was to the extension of 
slavery into new territories. He was,- moreover, a devoted 
lover of the Union, and held in abhorrence all ideas either of 
peaceable or forcible secession or nullification. Living in a 
Border State, where the personal and party feuds which pre- 
ceded and followed the outbreak of the Rebellion were so violent 
and bitter, and upon which at one time it seemed as if the 
whole brunt of the battle might fall, his first hopes undoul)tedly 
were, as were those of many of his friends farther North, that 
some arrangement or adjustment might be devised, with a view 
to prevent the fratricidal strife, and avert the full horrors of 



Civil War. He was in complete accord with the great Boston 
Memorial to that effect, which, under the lead of Mr. Everett, 
and in company with others of all parties, I had a share in 
the privilege of bearing to Congress in January, 1861. In 
this spirit, he published, a few weeks before the first fatal 
blow had been struck, a pamphlet entitled " The Border 
States ; their Power and Duty," which presented the great 
questions before the country with boldness and signal aljility, 
and appealed to the Border States to interpose, Ijy some 
separate concerted action, for the settlement of all issues in 
dispute, and for the ultimate preservation of the Union. 
Reviewed in the light of subsequent developments and of 
final results, this appeal would probably be regarded with less 
approbation than it was at the time of its publication. But 
even then, as it soon proved, the time for discussion had 
passed, s^nd little remained but to resist force by force. In 
that contest, Mr. Kennedy's influence and efforts were strongly 
and unqualifiedly on the side of the Government and the 
Union, and no coldness of friends, or dangers from enemies, 
could deter or daunt him. 

During the progress of the War, he communicated a series 
of Letters to the " National Intelligencer," under the assumed 
name of " Paul Ambrose," in which he ably discussed " the 
principles and incidents of the Rebellion as these rose to view 
in the rapid transit of events ; " which were collected and pub- 
lished in a volume, with his own name, in 1865. This was 
the last work which he gave to the public ; and he soon after- 
wards embarked for Europe, in the hope of reinvigorating his 
somewhat shattered health. 

It was not his first visit abroad. He had crossed the Atlan- 
tic twice before, and was no stranger to some of the best of 
English and European society. In those visits, he had renewed 
the intimacy with Thackeray and Dickens which he had 
enjoyed while they were in America, and had formed many 
other friendships with the literary men of France and England. 



9 



During his last tour, he was selected by Mr. Seward as one of 
the United-States Commissioners, at the grand Exposition 
of the Industry of all Nations in Paris, and in that capacity 
rendered valuable services ; especially as one of the small 
select Commission, under the Presidency of Prince Napoleon, 
to which the subject of a uniform Decimal Currency was 
referred. 

Mr. Kennedy had more than once contemplated giving to 
the press his " Notes of Travel," of which he has left many 
manuscript volumes, carefully composed and revised, which 
may still, I trust, furnish the material of a posthumous pub- 
lication. 

On his last return home, in October, 1868, he presided at a 
great Republican Mass Meeting in Baltimore ; and made an 
earnest and eloquent appeal to the South to acquiesce cordially 
in the results of the War, and to unite " in that new pathway 
which Providence has ordained to be the line of our future 
march to the highest destiny of nations." This was his last 
public word. 

In looking back on the life which has been thus rapidly 
sketched, and comparing his capacities for usefulness with his 
actual career, one cannot but feel how much has been lost to 
the best service of the country, in his case as in too many 
others, by the accidents of politics, and the caprices of parties. 
As a Senator, or as a Diplomatist, he would have done 
eminent honor to the nation at home or abroad ; and he 
seemed particularly suited, by his abilities, his accomplish- 
ments, and his tastes, for prolonged and continuous service 
in spheres like these. But it was not in his nature to seek 
them, and it was not his fortune to enjoy them. I may be 
pardoned for recalling, in such a connection, those striking 
lines of Coleridge : — 

" How seldom, Friend ! a good great man inherits 
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains ! 
It sounds like stories from the world of spirits 



' 10 • 

If any man obtain that which he merits, 
Or any merit that which he obtains. 

Goodness and greatness are not means, but ends ! 

Hath he not alwaj^s treasures, always friends, 

The good great man ? — tliree treasures, love, and light, 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; 

And three firm friends, more sure than daj- and night, — 

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death." 

Mr. Kennedy, as a man, was greater and better than all his 
books. One certainly looks in vain in all that he wrote or 
did for the full measure of those gifts and acquirements of 
mind and heart, that learning and wisdom, that wit and 
humor, that whole-souled cordiality and gayety and kindness, 
which shone out so conspicuously in the intimacies of daily 
intercourse. A truer friend or more charming companion 
has rarely been found or lost by those who have enjoyed 
the privilege of his companionship and friendship ; and among 
those may be counted not a few of our most distinguished 
authors and statesmen. A delightful week which I passed 
under his roof, many years ago, gave me an opportunity of 
witnessing the esteem and affection in which he was held by 
my only fellow-guest, Washington Irving, — whose Life, indeed, 
contains more than one letter to him, beginning, " Dear Horse 
Shoe," and ending " Geoffrey Crayon." 

Though far advanced in his seventy-fifth year, and though he 
had occasionally suffered not a little of late from severe phy- 
sical infirmities, Mr. Kennedy was naturally of so genial and 
joyous a temper, and sympathized so warmly with the young 
and gay, that the idea of his being an old man had hardly yet 
occurred to any one but himself. In the eyes of those around 
him, he seemed to have nothing of age except its experience 
and its mellowness. He was not insensible himself, however, 
to the approach of the inexorable hour. In a letter which I 
received from him not many weeks ago, — one of the last of 
a series running through a term of more than thirty years, — 
he said to me with more of sadness than I had ever known 



11 



him to write, certainly in regard to himself: " It is but small 
consolation to me — when I look at my letter-file, and see 
three or four of your letters asking for a word of recognition, 
— to argue my good intentions, and my infirmity of hand, for 
that silence which I daily resolve to break : for it is so per- 
sistently followed by a new delinquency, in the breach of my 
resolve, as to bring me nothing better than a new regret. 
But I know you will pardon these habitual shortcomings, — 
like the good and trusty friend you have always been, — and 
indulge me in that constrained silence, which is, in truth, 
only the sign and warning of one more inevitable, that comes 
with gentle step and, I trust, a friendly message to make it 
welcome." 

A few weeks more at Saratoga Springs, by the advice of his 
physician, and a few weeks afterwards at Newport, where he 
had fixed his summer residence for several years jDast, com- 
pleted his earthly career. A hidden malady was developed, 
which, after two days of agony, patiently and bravely borne, 
and one day of tranquil slumbers, released him to his rest. 
I may not omit to add that, in a blessed interval of wakefulness 
and ease, he eagerly renewed those pledges of Christian faith 
which he had often given in health, and was able to take leave 
of those dearest to him, as he said, " in perfect peace of mind 
and body." 

He died at Newport, on the 18th of August ; and his remains 
were at once removed to his native city, to repose in the neigh- 
boring Green Mount Cemetery, at the dedication of which he 
had delivered the Address, in 1839. 

Mr. Kennedy left no children. His wife, who, with her 
sister, has rendered his home for more than thirty years so 
dear and delightful to himself, and so attractive to his friends, 
is a daughter of the late Edward Gray, Esq., of Baltimore, one 
of the worthiest and most respected merchants of that city ; of 
whom Irving, on hearing of his death in 1856, wrote thus, in 
words which I can indorse with all my heart : " To be under 



12 • 

his roof, in Baltimore, or at Ellicott's Mills, was to be in a 
constant state of quiet enjoyment to me. Every thing that I 
saw in him, and in those about him; in his tastes, habits, 
mode of life ; in his domestic relations and chosen intimacies, 
— continually struclc upon some happy chord in my own 
bosom, and put me in tune with the world and with human 
nature." 

Mr. Kennedy received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of 
Laws from Harvard University in 1863 ; and has been, for 
some years, an Associate Fellow of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences. 

Professor James Eussell Lowell then said : — 

Mr. President, — In the few words I shall say of Mr. Ken- 
nedy, I shall speak of him as it is fitting to speak of a man 
who made affection easy, and whom a short acquaintance had 
invested with something of the tender privilege of long friend- 
ship. Death should give a shelter from vague eulogy no less 
than from impertinent criticism. Here is no place for those 
invidiosi vert, on which, one is sometimes tempted to think, 
the Anglo-Saxon conscience is apt to lay an undue emphasis. 

It is very likely that Mr. Kennedy could not be called a man 
of genius in the creative sense of that somewhat elastic word ; 
but it is surely something to his honor, that, amid the mani- 
fold distractions of a busy and public life, he should have 
cherished the sweet and pure ambition of letters, of a higher 
and more durable success than politics and popularity can 
offer. In a society so prosperously active as ours, it is of good 
example to have had an intellectual ideal, and perhaps it is 
fairer here than elsewhere to measure a man rather by his 
aims than by his performance. After all, unless we adopt the 
plan of Pepys, and allow shelf-room only to books of blue blood, 
we must be willing to find a place for many volumes that 
could not make their claims valid with the heralds of literature. 
An exclusive commerce with the great may make us unduly 



13 

fastidious, and it is wholesome to unbend our faculties now 
and then from the strain of that Alpine society in the company 
of authors who simply know how to be agreeable. I think 
Mr. Kennedy's books have this pleasant quality, — a secret not 
seldom missed by writers more pretentious and of greater 
power. They are refined, manly, considerate of our grosser 
apprehensions ; they attempt no solution of the problem of 
the Infinite (as it is called) ; they abound in cheerful pictures 
of natural scenery ; and they will have a real value for the his- 
torian, from their lively notices of manners already remote. 
Perhaps the strongest impression they leave upon the mind is 
that they were written by a gentleman, a profession of greater 
consequence than is generally conceived. 

Perhaps we overestimate the worth of mere literary ability. 
The lion has been the painter this time, and authors have not 
been slack in impressing on mankind the supreme importance 
of their function. Nevertheless it may well be suspected that 
the power of expressing fine sentiments is of a lower quality 
than the less obtrusive skill of realizing them in the life and 
character. This talent Mr. Kennedy possessed beyond most 
men. One could not be in his company for never so short a 
time, without being touched by that gentle consideration for 
others which is the root of all good breeding. His courtesy 
was not the formal discipline of elegant manners. There was 
a sense of benefaction in it. Whoever came near him felt the 
friendly charm which his nature radiated, so that his very 
house seemed steeped in it and welcomed you no less heartily 
than he. He was in the highest sense a genial man. He 
had a singular gift for companionship, for being something 
better than his l)Ooks, and his finer qualities were lured out by 
the sympathy of the fireside. He was excellent in anecdote 
and reminiscence. His talk had just that pleasant suspicion 
of scholarship in it that befits the drawing-room, and never 
degenerated to the coarser flavor of pedantry. He could 
quote his bit of Horace or Virgil on occasion, which used to 



14 • 

be the neck-verse of cultivated men. He had the somewhat 
rare excellence of being playfully earnest ; and, though he had 
strong convictions, never made them the scourge of other 
men. 

But though gentleness was a prime quality in this gracious 
temperament, he could, when the times demanded, show quali- 
ties of stouter fibre. During the war of the Rebellion he 
stood firmly by the Nation, though it cost him a social position, 
which, to a man of his affectionate nature and social instincts, 
was dearer than any thing but duty. In the North it was easy 
to be loyal, — it was sometimes even profitable; but in Mary- 
land loyalty meant ostracism, and might mean something 
worse. For Mr. Kennedy it sundered lifelong ties of friend- 
ship, and habitudes of society scarce less painful in the break- 
ing. He might have escaped it all by a judicious impartiality 
between right and wrong ; nay, even by a little of that caution 
which we call meanness if it fail, and prudence if it prosper. 
But he was a brave man, and chose the nobler privilege of 
danger. 

How much fame may fall to his share, it would be out of 
place to compute too closely. Suffice it that lie at least escaped 
its vulgar makeweight, notoriety. Surely he has something 
better, as it is sweeter, in gentle memories that will perish 
only with the last of those who knew him. 

The Hon. George S. Hillard next addressed the meeting : 

I should not have added any thing to what has been 
said in honor of Mr. Kennedy, were it not that I am one of 
the few now present that were personally acquainted with 
him. This acquaintance was not of long duration, nor was 
it intimate ; indeed, my personal knowledge of him hardly 
began before he was sixty ; but I knew him well enough to 
feel able to give my emphatic assent to all that has been said 
in commendation of him by Professor Lowell and yourself. 

No one could see and know Mr. Kennedy without feeling 



15 



that he himself was more and better than his writings, 
excellent and estimable as these are. He was a man whose 
elements of growth were self-derived. He was born in a 
Southern state, and had the best training which that portion 
of the country could furnish at the time of his youth. The 
natural drift of men so born and taught was to politics ; but 
he resisted this general proclivity. He gave himself to 
literature and law, and slid into politics incidentally and 
accidentally ; and as literature was his first, it remained to the 
last his strongest love. 

Mr. Kennedy was delightful in all the social relations. He 
was given to hospitality, and no man appeared to more 
advantage when dispensing the gifts of hospitality. His 
conversation was frank, easy, and hearty. Men in our 
country, who have been much in public life, are apt to fall 
into a cautious and non-committal style of discourse. They 
are prone to talk with a vigilant self-observation, as if they 
feared that their words might be reported to their disadvan- 
tage by some unfriendly hearer. But he had none of this cold 
and timid prudence. He spoke out that which was in him, 
not fearing sometimes to utter what an ever cautious temper 
would have left unspoken. His conversation had the fresh- 
ness, the freedom, the courage of youth. His mind, his heart, 
never grew old. 

Of his works of fiction my recollection is but indistinct ; 
but I freshly remember his " Life of Wirt," and I think it one 
of the most graceful, genial, and delightful pieces of biography 
that the literature of our country has to show. And let me 
here express the hope that some competent hand will do for 
him what he did so well for his friend ; and the corre- 
spondence and unpublished manuscripts of Kennedy will 
surely afford to the biographer a theme not less full and 
fruitful than that furnished by the life and labors of the 
eminent lawyer, and more than respectable man of letters, 
whom he so well commemorated. 



16 



The President then read the following letter from Pro- 
fessor Oliver Wendell Holmes : — 

164 Charles Street, Sept. 8th, 11 a.m. 
My dear Mr. Winthrop : 

I am much disappointed in finding myself still so far indisposed that 
I do not feel like going to the meeting to-day. 

The circumstance that I was probably the last member of our 
Society who met Mr. Kennedy made me anxious to have an oppor- 
tunity to add a few words to the tribute you will pay to his memory, 
which I feel sure will be all that affectionate esteem and the knowledge 
of a life-time can render it. I could really have contributed nothing, 
except the memory of my few interviews, the two last of which, within 
less than a week of Mr. Kennedy's death, were singularly delightful. 
He was full of talk, so cheerful, so genial, so varied, — sometimes on 
jjolitical and historical matters with which he was familiar, sometimes 
relating personal experiences of which he had such a fund in his 
memory, always lively, entertaining, graceful in his discourse, — that 
I have rarely sat in a company when one man did more to keep all 
the rest happy in listening to him. There was no look of warning, no 
tone that could suggest a melancholy foreboding ; but, bright and brave 
in the face of fast gaining infirmity which he would not betray to 
sadden others, he shed sunshine about him to the last. 

It is singular that, having met him so few times, I should feel as if 
I knew him so well, and regret liis loss so deeply. It was not merely 
because he was of a true and generous natui'e, and of a fine intelligence 
and culture, but because he was so frank and hearty with those whom 
he honored with his friendship, that a week with him was like a year 
with a man of a nai-rower mould and colder feelings. 

I have written at a moment's notice, as I did hope to be with you ; 
but if you can make any use of my note, pray do so. 

Believe me, dear Mr. Winthrop, 

Yours faithfully, 

O. W. Holmes. 



The meeting was then dissolved. 






EJa12 



